Traditionally, wall to wall carpets have been installed by either being glued to concrete flooring (in commercial installations) or by stretching between staggered rows of steel pins (such as in the Roberts "smooth-edge" form of installation).
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,822,658 dated Apr. 18, 1989, a new system of carpet installation is disclosed in which a carpet is constructed having a backing substantially consisting of loops to be installed by hooked tape attached to the floor by pressure sensitive adhesive.
However even with this system, certain carpet products such as one's manufactured using synthetic nylon fibre can have significant atmospheric dimensional stability problems.
These problems stem from the fact that nylon absorbs moisture at a rate of approximately 6% of its weight and expands at a rate of approximately 30% of its size.
It seems certain manufactured products present more of a problem than others. Many reasons are contributing factors, for example, the type of manufacturing process used and the type of material (latex, C.V.A. Polyurethane etc.) used to encapsulate and tuft lock the bundles of fibre that are tufted through the primary backing. A real problem is that a carpet installer on site is unaware of any impending atmospheric problem until it is too late. Once the carpet has been installed at the perimeter and seams the ability for it to grow at the perimeter is eliminated and any growth will manifest itself in the form of unsightly buckles and wrinkles etc. The growth that occurs is often caused from the atmospheric swings in humidity which can occur. Such swings are most common in buildings which are not climate and temperature controlled.
Attempts to control this buckling have focused on
(a) gluing the carpet down along its whole undersurface;
(b) offsetting the expansion of nylon fibre by increasing the weight and rigidity of the carpet by the addition of fibreglass as a stabilizing factor; or
(c) using a hook and loop system to attach the carpet across its whole undersurface.
Increased use of fibreglass can give the carpet greater initial dimensional stability but does not entirely solve the problem. In fact in some situations such increased fibreglass can make the buckling worse if the carpet is not rigid enough to withstand the expansion forces. More significantly, increased rigidity makes it much more difficult to manoeuvre, roll, stretch and cut the carpet. It can be very difficult to pattern match such carpets since there is little or no "give" in the carpet by which to adjust the carpet to match the patterns.